Bach Books

B-0219

Title:

Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J.S. Bach

Sub-Title:

Contextual Bach Studies

Category:

Essay Collection

J.S. Bach Works:

BWV 1-248

Author:

Editors: Mark A. Peters (Professor of Music at Trinity Christian College) & Reginald L. Sanders (Professor of Music at Kenyon College).
Contributors: Wye J. Allanbrook, Gregory Butler, Eric Chafe, Jason B. Grant, Mary Greer, Tanya Kevorkian, Robin A. Leaver, Kayoung Lee, Robert L. Marshall, Mark A. Peters, Martin Petzoldt, Markus Rathey, Reginald L. Sanders, Steven Saunders, William H. Scheide, Hans-Joachim Schulze, Yo Tomita.
Preface: Robin A. Leaver

Written:

Country:

English

Published:

June 2018

Language:

English

Pages:

354 pages

Format:

HC / Kindle

Publisher:

Lexington Books

ISBN:

ISBN-10: 1498554954
ISBN-13: 978-1498554954

Description:

Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach collects 17 essays by leading Bach scholars. The authors each address in some way such questions of meaning in J.S. Bach's vocal compositions-including his Passions, Masses, Magnificat, and cantatas-with particular attention to how such meaning arises out of the intentionality of J.S. Bach's own compositional choices or (in Part IV in particular) how meaning is discovered, and created, through the reception of J.S. Bach's vocal works. And the authors do not consider such compositional choices in a vacuum, but rather discuss J.S. Bach's artistic intentions within the framework of broader cultural trends-social, historical, theological, musical, etc. Such questions of compositional choice and meaning frame the four primary approaches to J.S. Bach's vocal music taken by the authors in this volume, as seen across the book's four parts: Part I: How might the study of historical theology inform our understanding of J.S. Bach's compositional choices in his music for the church (cantatas, Passions, masses)? Part II: How can we apply traditional analytical tools to understand better how J.S. Bach's compositions were created and how they might have been heard by his contemporaries? Part III: What we can understand anew through the study of J.S. Bach's self-borrowing (i.e., parody), which always changed the earlier meaning of a composition through changes in textual content, compositional characteristics, the work's context within a larger composition, and often the performance context (from court to church, for example)? Part IV: What can the study of reception teach us about a work's meaning(s) in J.S. Bach's time, during the time of his immediate successors, and at various points since then (including our present)? The chapters in this volume thus reflect the breadth of current J.S. Bach research in its attention not only to source study and analysis, but also to meanings and contexts for understanding J.S. Bach's compositions.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Comments:

Buy this book at:

HC (2018): Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de
Kindle (2018): Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de

Source/Links:
Contributor: Aryeh Oron (July 2019)

New Essays:: Compositional Choices, Meaning in Vocal Music

William L. Hoffman wrote (July 31, 2019):
Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach, edited by Robin A.Leaver, is an extensive essay collection in several respects.¹ As a contextual study it explores four important historical musicology topics: 1. "Bach's Vocal Music in a Theological Context," 2. "Analytical Perspectives" using traditional tools, 3. Bach's Self-Modeling: Parody as Compositional Impetus" to change the music's meaning, and 4. The Reception of Bach's Vocal Works from his time to the present (https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12379112). It is a rare collection of Bach essays that focuses on all the Bach vocal music. Going far beyond basic musicological source studies, the collection provides important perspectives not previously examined as well as building on major contextual themes. It is a festschrift honoring Don O. Franklin,² "who for the past half-century has been a prominent leader in Bach studies," observes Leaver in the "Foreword" (Ibid.: xvii). The 17 essays are primarily by English-speaking authors as well as the late Martin Petzoldt and Hans-Joachim Schulze, with many having spent years pursing their topics. It is part of a growing wealth of publications such as the Riemenschneider Bach Institute's biannual BACH (https://www.bw.edu/libraries/riemenschneider-bach-institute/bach-journal/; the American Bach Society's biennial Bach Perspectives (https://www.americanbachsociety.org/perspectives.html), and the Bach Network's on-line Understanding Bach (https://bachnetwork.org/understanding-bach/).

The concept of Bach's compositional choices in his vocal music is most closely related to the topic of Bach borrowings, particularly in Leaver's essay, "J.S. Bach's parodies of Vocal Music: Conservation or Intensification" (Chapter 10: 177ff), in which Bach's cantatas are conserved through contrafaction in new text underlay from German cantatas to Latin Mass movements, where their original use in the German Lutheran Main Service Propers is transformed into music of the Latin Mass Ordinary of the four Missae: Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-236, and the Missa tota, Mass in B Minor. Meanwhile, the St. Mark Passion and the Christmas Oratorio, taken significantly from profane music for the Dresden court observances, shows part of a "careful and systematic compositional process," says Leaver (Ibid.: 195), that is intensification through parody to create challenging "liturgical music for the worship of the Leipzig churches."

Meaning in Bach's vocal music is related to the four various contexts as well as in "displacing the composer from musicology's pedestal to explore the whole world in which the composer lived, says in the "Preface" the co-editors, Mark A. Peters and Reginald L. Sanders (Ibid.: xix). The various authors "do not consider such compositional choices in a vacuum, but rather discuss Bach's artistic intentions within the framework of broader cultural trends — socia, historical, theological, musical, etc." Dedicatee Franklin's efforts were directed towards using historical musicology (http://swb.bsz-bw.de/DB=2.355/SET=1/TTL=131/NXT?FRST=1) to study the texts of Bach, his compositional choices, "understanding of temporal relationships in his compositions" and "the implications of such research" performing Bach's music today and this close tie between research and performance," they say (Ibid.: xxi).

Previous Bach Essays, Contextual Approaches

Collections of essays have come lately in Bach English language research, following monographs, led by Charles S. Terry, on types of music and individual works as well other studies on techniques and ingredients. Bach essay collections began with three Bach scholars' selections from their own studies: Gerhard Herz's Essays on J.S. Bach (Studies in musicology) (Ann Arbor MI: UMI Research Press, 1985); Robert L. Marshall's The Music of Johann Sebastian Bach: The Sources, the Style, the Significance (New York: Schirmir, 1989), and Christoph Wolff's BACH: Essays on his Life and Music (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). Also published are essay collections of various authors: Franklin's Bach Studies (1, Cambridge University Press, 1989); A Bach Tribute: Essays in Honor of William H. Scheide, edd. Paul Brainard, Ray Robinson (Kassel, Chapel Hill NC: Bärenreiter/Hinshaw, 1993), BACH Studies 2, ed. Daniel R. Melamed (Cambridge University Press, 1995); Music and Theology: Essays in Honor of Robin A. Leaver, ed. Daniel Zager (Scarecreow Press 2006), and The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach, ed. Raymond Erickson, Aston Magna Academy (Milwaukee WI: Amadeus Press, 2009). Special thematic Bach publications of various authors' essays include The World of the Bach Cantatas: Early Sacred Cantatas, Vol. 1, ed. Christoph Wolff (New York, W. W. Norton, 1995); Bach's Changing World: Voices in the Community (Leipzig), ed. Carol K. Baron (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), and Exploring Bach's B-minor Mass, edds. Yo Tomita, Robin A. Leaver, Jan Smaczny (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Of the four contextual approaches to Bach's music, theology has been important since German scholars such as Friedrich Smend (1893-1980, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Smend) began in 1925 exploring Lutheran theological concepts in Bach's major works, the B-Minor Mass and the Passions, with his special interest in the musical thematic cross (chiastic) symbol of melody and musical structure as well as number symbology. Analytical, source-critical studies have been part of the New Musicology movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_musicology) in a multi-disciplinary sociological approach (see thematic Bach Perspectives, Ibid.). Bach self-modeling, also called "parody," has been a topic pursued by various scholars, notably Schulze, who in Compositional Choices, "Parody and Text Quality in the Vocal Works of Bach," focuses on "en-bloc" verbatim new text underlay in the Cöthen serenades that became festive cantatas (see http://bach-cantatas.com/Articles/HoffmanBachDramaII.htm: "Royal Court at Köthen: Serenades"), as well as complex alterations, while only one book on the subject had been published, Norman Carrell's 1967 Bach the Borrower (https://www.amazon.com/Bach-Borrower-Norman-Carrell/dp/0313222053); two recent books have explored borrowings in the Christmas Oratorio and the B-Minor Mass: Marcus Rathey's impressive Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Music, Theology, Culture (Oxford University Press, 2016; see http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV142-D.htm: "Marcus Rathey's New Book"), and Daniel R. Melamed's Listening to Bach: the Mass in B Minor and the Christmas Oratorio (Oxford University Press, 2018; see http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV232-Gen19.htm: "B-Minor Mass: Contemporary Perspective"). Bach Reception History began with emigrant Bach scholar Gerhard Herz in 1935, deconstructing the Romantic myth that Bach was totally forgotten in the second half of the 18th century.³ Other Bach myths have been challenged, especially Bach, the Fifth Evangelist, in Petzoldt's Compositional Choices article, "The Theological in Bach Research" (Chapter 5).

"The wonderfully expanded musicological realm demands that we search for meanings, for causes, for the significance of pieces of music both as an art work and as an act of human communication, a conveyor of meaning," say Peters and Sanders, in their "Preface" (Ibid.: xx). To do this requires studying music in the contexts of culture, society, and the individual composer, and as such stakeholders as patrons, performers, and audiences in addition to successor composers and their listeners as well as publishers, philosophers, poets, and entrepreneurs. What are the dominant systems of thought and practice within which the music was originally created and received?," they ask. "From this far from exhaustive list, we believe it is clear that the search for meaning may be seen as one of the underlying themes in musicology today."

Theological Context

The framework of the 17 essays enables the reader to study each essay sequentially and make connections. The first topic on theology in five essays covering one-third of Compositional Choices involves the textual foundation for Bach's musical sermons. Non-liturgical church works composed in Mühlhausen are the focus of Marcus Rathey's "In Honor of God and the City: Strategies of Theological and Symbolic Communication in Bach's town council Cantata Gott ist mein König (BWV 71)." Mühlhausen as a free imperial city had a tradition of council cantatas in annual special sacred services at the beginning of the calendar year which drew on biblical readings based on Romans Chapter 13, that government authority comes from the grace of God. This is bolstered by Old Testament narratives and Psalms as well as metaphors, while the actual music is designed to celebrate the members of the council with service sermons and musical texts of the preaching pastors. The music was presented by a panoply of soloists and instruments in concerto-aria cantata form in contrasting solo and ensemble passages with biblical quotations, chorales, and strophic poetry. Bach's Cantata 150, "Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich" (For you, Lord, is my longing, Ps. 25:1; Francis Browne BCW English translation) has recently been determined to be sacred tribute to burgomaster Conrad Mechbach, while Rathey's suggests that the Bach "lost" Mühlhausen council cantatas of 1709 and 1710 (Ibid.: 16ff), BWV 1138.1 and 1138.2, may be the extant occasional Cantata 196, "Der Herr denket an uns" (The Lord thinks of us, Ps. 115:12), and Cantata 143, "Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele" (Praise the Lord, my soul, Ps. 146:1). Bach's other Mühlhausen occasional cantatas observed memorials, penitential services, and weddings — music of sorrow and joy which Bach set extensively in Leipzig (see https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Joy-Sorrow-Occasional-Cycle.htm: "Mühlhausen Seminal Works").

In Leipzig, one of Bach's primary vocal music interests was the celebratory Johannine Christus Victor atonement concept in his St. John Passion and certain cantatas set to John's Gospel, notably the 1725 Easter/Pentecost mini-cycle of Leipzig poet Mariane von Ziegler, particularly as studied by Eric Chafe.⁴ Casting a wider net in Compositional Choices, Chafe explores the Christological concept of incarnation coming in Bach's first cycle cantatfor the 1723 second and third day of the Christmas Festival: Cantata 40, Dazu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes (For this reason the Son of God appeared, 1 John 3:8) and Cantata 64, Sehet, welch eine Liebe (See, what sort of love, I John 3:1). Most significant, observes Chafe, are the four senses of scripture in the Christian four eras of salvation history: Jesus coming into the world, into the Christian church (at Pentecost), to the individual believer, and coming at the end of time in the eschatological (last things) sense. Cantata 40 deals with the duality in the first phase of Jesus incarnation birth and sacrificial death while Cantata 64 deals with "realized eschatology" and the concept of the certainty of salvation and everlasting life (Ibid.: 42ff).

One of the von Ziegler texts, Cantata 103, "Ihr werdet weinen und heulen" (You will weep and howl, John 16:20), for Jubilate (3rd Sunday after Easter) is a festive work opening the Leipzig Spring Fair and the first of John's gospel about Jesus' Farewell Discourse to his Disciples. Beyond the Johannine exegesis of Chafe is Mark A. Peters' Compositional Choices essay, "Death to Life, Sorrow to Joy: Martin Luther's Theology of the Cross and J.S. Bach's Eastertide Cantata Ihr werdet weinen und heulen (BWV 103). Peters, who did an informative monograph on von Ziegler's poetry and Bach's nine cantata settings,⁵ now explores Luther's theology in Cantata 103 in the Johannine dialectic juxtapositions of death/resurrection, Jesus' absence/presence, sorrow/joy and suffering/comfort. All Bach's Jubilate cantatas move from tribulation to joy, based upon the Sunday's Gospel, John 16:16-23, "Sorrow turned to joy" (see http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV103-D5.htm). Bach's treatment in Cantata 103 amplifies the gospel teaching, Luther's theology, and von Ziegler's poetic rendering, Peters finds, achieving "a close theological, homiletical, spiritual, and practical unity between Jesus' death and resurrection"

(Ibid.: 69).

In contrast to the Johannine Christus Victor concept of atonement as the Theology of Glory is the substitution theory of atonement as the Theology of the Cross, best exemplified in Matthew's gospel Passion account (Chapters 26 and 27) and Bach's setting in his St. Matthew Passion. Most notably is the monumental opening chorus, "Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen" (Come, you daughters, help me to lament), with its chorale trope, "O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig" (O Lamb of God, innocent) of Nikolaus Decius' German "Agnus Dei." Mary Greer's Compositional Choices essay, "Toward an Understanding of J.S. Bach's Use of Red Ink in the Autograph Score of the Matthew Passion," examines the symbolic, metaphorical, biblical and theological implications of Bach's rare emphasis on red ink as found in the Gospel text, the opening chorale text and the text incipit of the chorale, "Erkenne Mich, mein Hüter" (Recognise me, my guardian), the fifth verse of Paul Gerhardt's Passion chorale, "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" (O sacred head now wounded). These passages in red ink show the "allegorical attributes to Jesus's blood," suggests Greer (Ibid.: 93) in the intercessory plea to the Father in the German "Agnus Dei," in the "strengthening of the believer's faith when he hears the Gospel account of Jesus's Passion, death, and resurrection," and in the 18th century believer's "figurative mark on his forehead with the blood of Jesus, assuring him that he will be among the Elect, i. e., have eternal life."

Finally, from an historical perspective is the last essay in the "Theological Context" section, the late Martin Petzoldt's "The Theological in Bach Research (2007)," English translation Mark Peters, an account of the development of theological studies in Bach scholarship since the 1950 institution of the Neue Bach Ausgabe (New Bach Edition) of his works. The saga begins with the new chronology of Bach's works dispelling the myth that Bach created all of his Leipzig cantata sacred sermons throughout his tenure but instead confined them almost entirely to three cycles in his first seven years (1723-27). This led to a schism between the two scholarly camps, the Marxist East Germans and the democratic West Germans, with the former, headed by historical church music author Friedrich Blume. He suggested that this concentration dispelled another myth, Bach as the Fifth Evangelist, the great spiritual composer, with the International Working Group for Theological Bach Research (1976-1996) and the opposing faction of Bach as representative of the profane Enlightenment.

Petzoldt, the best known Bach theologian of his time, especially for his Bach Commentary,⁶ offers eight approaches to Bach sacred vocal works in terms of text and the connections between text and music (Ibid.: 110-12): 1. The "textual play" "of Bach's method of treating texts or of varying the language thereof as documenting Bach's intention"; 2. the use of intentional biblical commentary word combinations like "Kreuzstab" and "Sündern-Wassersucht"; 3. the use of the Wittenburg Luther edition; 4. published texts in Bach works in edited and altered form; 5. strong interest in major theological doctrines such as the Trinity, Ecclesiology, Sin, the Sacraments, Jesus and Believing Soul Dialogue; 6. Biblical imagery, especially in recitatives; 7. contemporary themes such as the relationship between Christianity and rationalism or the debate between Lutheran Orthodoxy and Pietism; and 8. The choice of hymn stanzas in closing chorales as a catechetical function. It was quite fitting that the American Bach Society's Bach Notes in the fall of 2015 carried two articles about Petzoldt: Leaver's "In Memoriam: Martin Petzold," and Franklin's "Remembrance of Martin Petzoldt" (https://www.americanbachsociety.org/Newsletters/BachNotes23.pdf).

FOOTNOTES

¹ Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach, the eighth Contextual Bach Studies, edited by Robin A.Leaver (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2018),
² Don O. Franklin, biography, https://chathambaroque.org/don-o-franklin/, bibliography http://swb.bsz-bw.de/DB=2.355/SET=1/TTL
=1/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=1016&SRT=YOP&TRM=Franklin%2C+Don
+O.&MATCFILTER=N&MATCSET=N&NOABS=Y.
³ Gerhard Herz, Johann Sebastian Bach: im Zeitalter des Rationalismus und der Frühromantik; zur Geschichte der Bachbewegung von ihren Anfängen bis zur Wiederaufführung der Matthäuspassion im Jahre 1829 (Kassel: Bären, 1935); English edition," Johann Sebastian Bach in the Early Romantic Period," in Essays on J. S. Bach (Ann Arbor MI: UMI Research Press, 1985: 67). Herz publications, see Bach Bibliography http://swb.bsz-bw.de/DB=2.355/SET=1/TTL=31/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=1016&SRT=YOP&TRM=Gerhard
+Herz&MATCFILTER=N&MATCSET=N&NOABS=Y.
⁴ See Eric Chafe, J. S. Bach's Johannine Theology: The St. John Passion and the Cantatas for Spring 1725 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); also Chafe's Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1991), and Analyzing Bach Cantatas (Oxford University Press, 2003)
⁵ Mark A. Peters, A Woman's Voice in Baroque Music: Mariane von Ziegler and J. S. Bach (Aldershot GB & Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2008).
⁶ Martin Petzoldt, Bach Kommentar: Theologisch Musikwissenschaftlicke Kommentierung der Geistlichen Vokalwerke Johann Sebastian Bachs; Vol. 1, Trinity Time, 2004; Vol. 2, Advent to Trinity, 2007; Vol. 3 Passions, Occasional Music, 2019; Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart (Kassel: Bärenreiter); see also Günther Stiller, Johann Sebastian Bach and Liturgical Life in Leipzig, ed. Robin a Leaver; Eng. trans. Herbert J. A. Bouman etc. (St. Louis MO: Concordia, 1984), and Markus Rathey, "A Divided Country — A Divided Bach: The Cantor-Kapellmeister Controversy and the Cold War," BACH, Vol. XLVII No. 2 (Berea OH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, 2016: 1-26).

—————

To Come: Compositional Choices and Meaning in Bach's, Vocal Music Part 2: Analytical Perspectives, Parody as Compositional Impetus, Reception History.

Compositional Choices: Reception History

William L. Hoffman wrote (August 10, 2019):
Two of the most challenging areas of Bach research are the studies of Bach borrowings, often called parody, and the field of reception history (https://guides.zsr.wfu.edu/c.php?g=34352&p=220665). Both were first studied in Germany between the World Wars and began to come to fruition beginning in mid-century with the precise dating of Bach's vocal works. The field of historical musicology (and the early music movement) was established in the 1930s, most notably at Columbia University (https://music.columbia.edu/graduate-study/programs/graduate-study-in-historical-musicology), with an interdisciplinary, humanistic approach. "Music is studied through primary sources, the analysis and development of style, and in wider historical, cultural, and social contexts," says the prospectus, under the banner of musicology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicology#Historical_musicology). Besides significant self-modeling, the music of Bach was developed in a stimulating theological and cultural environment, which is now being rigorously and pervasively studied, with the historical reception involving a range of performance conditions and stakeholders from Bach's time to the present.

The final section of Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach,¹ Part IV asks: What can the study of reception teach us about a work's meaning(s) in J. S. Bach's time, during the time of his immediate successors, and at various points since then (including our present)? Bach reception history began with emigrant Bach scholar Gerhard Herz in 1935, deconstructing the Romantic myth that Bach was totally forgotten in the second half of the 18th century.² Through source-critical studies of the music and other sources such as estate catalogs, text books, and correspondence, as well as biographies, historical studies and relevant articles in the Bach-Jahrbuch, Herz focused on Bach's vocal music and its transmission through his sons and student copyists as well as early publishers. The Bach legacy — which also included the dissemination of keyboard music through students and advocates, as well as theoretical studies of keyboard music and style, chorales and fugues — actually flourished and only took Nikolaus Forkel's timely biography for the legacy to coalesce and enter the public domain. Herz's work, particularly on the Bach estate division beginning in 1750, also involved thematic catalogues and studies of the Bach Family, Bach heirs, the Thomas School, the Breitkopf catalogues and the Berlin connection.

Reception History History

Hiastorical Bach reception began in the 19th century with the Bach Revival and evolved through various disciplines and media as he became part of the "3 B's" triumvirate along with Beethoven and Brahms. As the cult of the performer was stimulated and entered the mainstream of popular interest, early 20th century recordings by Bach champions harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, organist Albert Schweitzer, cellist Pablo Casals and — yes — conductor Leopold Stokowski, brought Bach's music into the home. Simultaneously with the precise dating of Bach's music in the 1950s came the audio revolution of broadcast and reproduction (see "Bach & Beyond: B-A-C-H Motif, Jazz, Contemporary Settings," http://bach-cantatas.com/NVD/Organ-Revival-20.htm), and finally, today's social media platforms that bring the music and the facts instantly through on-line sources such as YouTube, Smart Phones and Facebook, the Bach Archiv-Leipzig and Bach Digital.

Some of the key figures involved in reception history (Rezeptionsgeschichte) in the 20th century were polemicist Carl Dahlhaus (1928-1989, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Dahlhaus), and theorists Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenkerian_analysis) and Theodore Adorno (1903-1969, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_W._Adorno. Dahlhaus in his 1967 article "Problems in reception history"³ cited the complaints about the suppression or neglect of reception history in past musical histories where the process of musical analysis tended to ignore certain non-musical facts about the aesthetics of reception in part because each generation brought different perspectives, relativism, and subjectivity.

Reception History Publications

The most intensive study of Bach musical reception has been focused on Bach's organ works by Russell Stinson,⁴ partly because of the early transmission of non-autograph sources: The Bach Manuscripts of Johann Peter Kellner and His Circle: A Case Study in Reception History and The Reception of Bach's Organ Works from Mendelssohn to Brahms. Other Stinson publications include his essay collection, J. S. Bach at His Royal Instrument: Essays on his Organ Works, as well as his monographs of organ music collections, J. S. Bach's Great Eighteen Organ Chorales, and Bach: The Orgelbüchlein with chapters on reception history.

Other source studies have included The Forkel-Hoffmeister & Kühnel Correspondence: A Document of the early 19th Century Bach Revival, ed. George B. Stauffer (New York: C. F. Peters, 1990), about Forkel's efforts to publish Bach's keyboard works and Biography, and Rosalyn Trucek, "Musical Authenticity - Is it a legitimate offspring of Janus?' Interaction, Journal of the Tureck Bach Research Foundation, Vol. 2, (1998) (Philadelphia PA, 1998, © 1999 Graham G Hawker; https://www.curtis.edu/academics/library/tureck-bach-research-institute-at-curtis-institute-of-music/documents/musical
-authenticity---is-it-a-legitimate-offspring-of-janus-part-1/. The best general collection of essays on Bach's organ music is J. S. Bach as Organist: His Instruments, Music, and Performance Practices, edd. George Stauffer & Ernest May (Bloomington IN: Indian University Press, 1986; http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=21992: Table of Contents). Gregory Butler's study of Bach's Clavier-Ubung III: The Making of a Print. With a Companion Study of the Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel Hoch," BWV 769 (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1990) is an exemplary study of the genesis and reception of this organ collection in 1735-39, while Peter Wollny's recent "“Neuerkenntnissen zu einigen Kopisten der 1730er Jahr,” Bach-Jahrbuch 102 (2016: 83-91) explores the genesis of the Ascension Oratorio during the same time. Stauffer is in the midst of producing volumes of Bach organ music for Wayne Leupold (Colfax NC, https://www.wayneleupold.com/bach-organ-works/) and will publish in November, J. S. Bach: The Organ Works (Oxford University Press, 2019, https://www.amazon.com/J-S-Bach-George-B-Stauffer/dp/0195108027).

Recently, various books have been published ongeographic Bach reception history involving various countries:
The English Bach Awakening: Knowledge of J. S. Bach and his Music in England, 1750-1830, essays ed. Michael Kassler (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2004, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2284140); Celia Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn's Revival of the "St. Matthew Passion" (Ithica NY: Cornell University Press 2005, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1ffjpf4); J. S. Bach in Australia: Studies in Reception and Performance, essays edd Denis Collins, Kerry Murphy, Samantha Owens (University of Melbourne, 2018, https://music.uq.edu.au/article/2019/02/bach-australia), and Maria Borghesi's articles on Bach reception history in Italy (https://hfmdd.academia.edu/MariaBorghesi).

In a related vein are recent findings of Bach materials in Leningrad and Nuremberg and related books. Most notably is Tatiana Shabalina's Bach Network on-line "Recent Discoveries in St Petersburg and their Meaning for the Understanding of Bach’s Cantatas" (http://www.bachnetwork.co.uk/ub4/shabalina.pdf) and "Discoveries in St Petersburg: New Perspectives on Bach and Poland" (http://www.bachnetwork.co.uk/ub9/UB9-Shabalina.pdf), as well as Christine Blanken's "A Cantata-Text Cycle of 1728 from Nuremberg: A preliminary report on a discovery relating to J. S. Bach’s so-called ‘Third Annual Cycle’" (https://bachnetwork.co.uk/ub10/ub10-blanken.pdf), involving Bach-related published materials collected during his Leipzig career. Contextual Bach Studies of contemporary sources and subsequent findings (https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/_/CBA/Contextual-Bach-Studies) offer a wealth of material on topics related to Bach and his society.

Another area related to reception history is the study of music related to Bach and how its was received in the historical, social and church realms. Three recent books on a variety of subjects are: Andrew Talle's Beyond Bach: Music and Everyday Life in the Eighteenth Century (Urbana ILL: University Illinois Press, 2017; contents, https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/ToC/9780252083891TOC.pdf); Michael Maul's Bach's Famous Choir: The Saint Yhomas Scoolin Leipzig, 1212-1804, ed. trans. Richard Howe (Woodbridge GB: Boydell Press, 2018; review, https://www.earlymusicamerica.org/web-articles/book-review-bachs-famous-choir/), and Jeffery Sposato's Leipzig After Bach: Church & Concert Life in a German City (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; contents: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/leipzig-after-bach-9780190616953?cc=us&lang=en&; review, https://www.earlymusicamerica.org/web-articles/how-leipzig-fared-post-bach/). Two other books offer valuable resources related to reception history: Bach: A Life in Pictures (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2018; see https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/shop/product/details/BVK2280/, Preface: np; because of $300 price, book is available at most state universities), and an essay anthology, Music at German Courts, 1715-1760: Changing Artistic Priorities, edd. Samantha Owens, Barbara M. Reul, Janice B. Stockigt (Wodbirdge GB: Boydell Press, 2011; https://books.google.com/books?id=NeTwCgAAQBAJ
&printsec=frontcover&dq=music+at+german+courts,+1715-1760&hl
=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjWgP7Vp_fjAhWIVc0KHUOnBkAQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v
=onepage&q=music%20at%20german%20courts%2C%201715-1760&f=false

Reception History Essays

When Bach scholar Daniel R. Melamed speaks of the historical listening and hearing experience of Bach's music in his books⁵ as well as at the American Bach Society 2018 meeting (https://www.americanbachsociety.org/Newsletters/BachNotes29.pdf: 7), he emphasizes the need for a "historical listening experience" with the "focus on musical substance and the final product rather than 'origin stories'.” Reception history has increasingly examined the Bach contemporary reception beyond the musical substance to include contextual factors, including audiences' responses and contemporary reactions. This is the focus of Kevorkian's "The Leipzig Audiences of J. S. Bach's Matthew Passion to 1750." Kevorkian, who thanks Don O. Franklin and Melamed "for their many helpful comments on this chapter" (Ibid.: 255), focuses on the Leipzig Good Friday Vespers with its annual Passion performances beginning with liturgical oratorio Passions in 1721, alternating between the St. Thomas and St. Nikolaus churches, as well as the progressive New Church which introduced poetic Passion oratorios beginning in 1717, and chronicles many historically informed details. "Virtually everyone in the audience was literate" and has access to the libretto books, she says (Ibid.: 247), as well as being attentive throughout and having contextual associations to the types of texts and familiarity with the chorales presented. By 1750 she suggests, the Leipzig Passion audiences would have been quite accepting of the modern elements along side the traditional ones.

The complexity of the use of borrowed Bachian materials is examined in Jason Grant's "The Vocal Music of the Bach Family in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works." Second son of Sebastian, Emanuel (1714-88, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Philipp_Emanuel_Bach) was the faithful keeper of his father's and the Bach Family's music. Succeeding Georg Philipp Telemann as director of Hamburg music in 1768, he particularly continued the tradition of presenting special music on the four principal feast days of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and Michaemas, as well as Passions during Lent. Emanuel continued the "tradition of presenting highly complex (and at times problematic)" pasticcios, says Grant, citing Peter Wollny (Ibid.: 262f), involving the music of contemporary and older composers which Emanuel found appropriate and suitable. These included 21 annual oratorio Passions, "all pasticcios with varying amounts of Bach's own music or creative input," says Grant (263). "Not surprisingly, C. P. E. turned to the music of J. S. Bach more often than to that of any other member of the family," says Grant (Ibid.: 274). "In part, this is due to the sheer amount of his father's music that C. P. E. Bach had at his disposal." Emanuel Bach's complete music is still being published by the Packard Humanities Institute, https://cpebach.org.

Scheide Perspective c.1946

Bach reception would never have existed if it were not for the Bach revival in the 19th century and the beginning of the modern Bach revival in the United States in the 1940s, led by Bach performer and scholar⁶ William H.

Scheide (1914-2014, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Scheide-William.htm), founder of the Bach Aria Group (1946-1980, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_Aria_Group). Scheide's essay, "The Need for a New Music: J. S. Bach in Contemporary Context (1946)," was a plea "to argue for the inclusion of Baroque music in the concert repertory at a time when it was not regularly there," says the "Editors' note" (Ibid.: 295). The reprint "opens up new perspectives on the beginnings of the modern Bach revival in the United States." Baroque music "is essentially a stranger to the musical public," he argues (Ibid.: 287), despite its "powerful rhythmic drive," obvious melodic content within harmonic requirements, and "faultless craftsmanship," which could inform the 20th century need for a "new" music, albeit old in the making.

Writing about 1946, Scheide finds that only two dozen Bach works were known and that his music had three groups of supporters: musical theorists marveling at his counterpoint but not with mass appeal, "romantic transcribers and popularizers" discovering "the monumental and pathetic in Bach"; and jazz devotees with an affinity for his music (Scheide does not describe the jazz interest in Bach as improviser). Scheide found that many instruments in Bach's time were obsolete or out of character: the quiet clavichord, diminutive violin, and church organ, while the piano and amateur chorus like Bach's orchestra seemed an anachronism. While some of Bach's music, such as chorale and fugues, required a trained listener, says Scheide (Ibid.: 293f), much music could be tapped: concerto style works, numerous arias and choruses, and "scores of great instrumental beauty." Fortunately, in the next half century recording technology and social media platforms have won over numerous Bach fans with a culture whose temperament for experience is being satisfied.

21st Century Perspectives

Reception history also offers the opportunity to explore the frontiers of Bach studies in the 21st century, notably such topics as Robert L. Marshall's "Bach at the Boundaries of Music History: Preliminary Thoughts on the B-minor Mass and the Late Style Paradigm." While the great work "is easily Bach's most written about," says Marshall: Ibid.: 297), several major facets are still being explored, including its purpose, shape and mixed styles, movement parody (contrafaction) sources, and early performances. The modern movements in the Mass, the last to be composed or adapted, shows that the music is quite progressive, says Marshall (Ibid.: 300f). A watershed event was the "International Symposium 'Understanding Bach's B-minor mass'" in 2007, a rarity of collaborative scholarly study which produced the essay collection, Exploring Bach's B-minor Mass, edd. Yo Tomita, Robin A. Leaver, Jan Smaczny (Cambridge University Press, 2013, https://www.bookdepository.com/Exploring-Bachs-B-minor-Mass-Jan-Smaczny/9781107007901), a fine mix of source-critical, textual and reception articles.⁷

Various still-controversial topics were outlined in Hans-Joachim Schulze's 2004 essay, "Bach in the Early Twenty-first Century,"⁷ a cautionary assessment of Bach scholarship and challenges in the future. Schulze seems skeptical of the OVPP (on-voice-per-part concept), the "current vogue for 'updating' and reinterpreting" works, the failure to use both the "why" and "how" (motive and method) questions in studies, the search for hidden meanings such as "abstract numerical relationships," the reconstruction of lost works as the St. Mark Passion, and equal temperament. Schulze advocates "a close collaboration of scholarship and practice." Significant related articles are Hans-Joachim Schulze's "The B minor Mass — Perpetual Touchstone for Bach Research," in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985: 311-20), in which he cautioned that "scholarship and practice still confront many problems (Ibid.: 319), and Peter Wollny's "Observations on the Autograph of the B-Minor Mass," trans. James Brokaw, in BACH Vol. 47 (2016 No. 2: 27-46), which finds that second youngest son Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732-95) making markings in the score suggests his father's plan to perform all or parts of the work, although no actual performances has been found.

Postscript

"The nature of reception study often requires scholars to branch out spheres of research that lie outside their main subject area (i.e. spheres that focus on the individuals and situations to which a particular source is linked) so its future lies in the collaboration between scholars with different specialist backgrounds," says Yo Tomita in his article "Manuscripts."⁸ "The knowledge gained through the exploration of specific people, periods, and regions, should then be reassessed in the context of the placement of its subject within [the] broader current of musical scenes and trends," he says (Ibid.": 86). Perhaps at some point in the future, scholars engaged in reception history may examine themselves and how the changing perspectives and new findings impact on their research since they are an important part of how Bach and his music are received and since no era or discipline has a monopoly on the facts.

FOOTNOTES

¹ Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach, edds. Mark A.Peters & Reginald Sanders; Festschrift for Don O. Franklin, the eighth Contextual Bach Studies, series edited by Robin A.Leaver (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2018).
² Gerhard Herz, Johann Sebastian Bach: im Zeitalter des Rationalismus und der Frühromantik; zur Geschichte der Bachbewegung von ihren Anfängen bis zur Wiederaufführung der Matthäuspassion im Jahre 1829 (Kassel: Bären, 1935); English edition," Johann Sebastian Bach in the Early Romantic Period," in Essays on J. S. Bach (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985: 67)
³ Carl Dahlhaus, "Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte" (Cologne: Gerig, 1967), Eng. trans. J. B. Robinson, in Foundations of music history (Cambridge University Press, 1983: 150-165).
⁴ Russell Stinson, The Bach Manuscripts of Johann Peter Kellner and His Circle: A Case Study in Reception History (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1989); The Reception of Bach's Organ Works from Mendelssohn to Brahms (Oxford University Press, 2006); J. S. Bach at His Royal Instrument: Essays on his Organ Works (Oxford University Press, 2012; https://global.oup.com/academic/product/j-s-bach-at-his-royal-instrument-9780199917235?cc=us&lang=en&#); J. S. Bach's Great Eighteen Organ Chorales (Oxford University Press: 2001), and Bach: The Orgelbüchlein (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
⁵ See Daniel R. Melamed, Hearing Bach's Passions, updated edition (Oxford University Press, 2016, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Books/B0214.htm), and Listening to Bach: The Mass in B Minor and The Christmas Oratorio (Oxford University Press, 2018, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV232-Gen19.htm: "B-Minor Mass: Contemporary Perspective"; see also https://global.oup.com/academic/product/listening-to-bach-9780190881054?cc=us&lang=en&#: Description).
⁶ William H. Scheide, Bach Bibliography, http://swb.bsz-bw.de/DB=2.355/SET=4/TTL=11/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT
=1016&SRT=YOP&TRM=Scheide%2C+William&MATCFILTER=N&MATCSET=N&NOABS=Y; just before his death in 2014, Scheide submitted this essay to Compositional Choices . . . .
⁷ Hans- Joachim Schuze, Afterword: "Bach in the Early Twenty-first Century," in The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach, ed. Raymond Erickson, Aston Magna Academy Book (New York: Amadeus Press, 2009).
⁸ Yo Tomita, "Manuscripts," in The Routeledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach, ed. Robin A. Leaver (London & New York: Routeledge, 2017); forthcoming is Yo Tomita Richard Rastall: The Genesis and Early History of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier, Book II: a composer and his editions, c.1738-1850 (Aldershot: Ashgate).

Jean-Pierre Grivois wrote (August 10, 2019):
[To Willian Hoffman] I wrote in French the following study about Parody in JSB vocal works. It is quite exhaustive.
Can it help you ?
Do you want me to translate it ?

William L. Hoffman wrote (August 10, 2019):
[To Jean-PierreGivois] Yes, it’s a great study, chronologically, and should go with your first postings and includes an initial translation. Please translate: "The Parody in the Vocal Work of J.S. Bach” http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Parody-Tables.htm;
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Arran/Bach-Parodies.pdf, Parodies in J.S. Bach vocal works,
  http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Arran/Bach-Parodies.pdf, and Parodies in Bach's Vocal Works - Discussions Part 6, http://bach-cantatas.com/Search-Result.htm?cx=partner-pub-1395360517184161%3A8ku9se-lih1&cof=FORID%3A10&ie
=ISO-8859-1&q=Parody+Jean-Pierre+Grivois&sa=Search&siteurl=www.bach-cantatas.com%2FTopics
%2FParody-Tables.htm&ref=&ss=400j85618j3

There will be more discussions of Bach self-modeling on the BCML.